


To Fill Your Heart (Like No Three Words Could Ever Do)

by perfectlystill



Category: Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: F/M, Long-Distance Relationship, Romantic Fluff, University, Voicemail
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-10-20 00:42:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20666486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perfectlystill/pseuds/perfectlystill
Summary: “We both know you don’t answer voicemails, Peter.” A beat. “And you always try to negotiate with bad guys.”“I try to change their minds. There’s a difference.” He kisses her again, speaking against her lips. “And I do answer my voicemails.”“You never answered mine,” she says.





	To Fill Your Heart (Like No Three Words Could Ever Do)

**Author's Note:**

> **Nobody:**  
**Me:** Remember all the voicemails MJ left Peter on the Spider-Man app?
> 
> Final push to do something about my favorite thing in the whole world (those voicemails) from [tvfanatic97](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tvfanatic97/pseuds/tvfanatic97), and title from Stevie Wonder's "I Just Called to Say I love You."

Michelle blows a piece of hair out of her face, and her pencil continues adding lines, cross-hatching one side of the orange. Drawing a fruit bowl is basic, elementary, dull, and what’s to be expected of an introductory art class. 

MJ enrolled for her minor, but a near majority of the students signed up to check off their mandatory art elective. She doubts sketching a pile of fake bananas, grapes, apples and oranges is going to promote much interest in the department. 

Although, learning perspective by making the road less travelled a triangle ticked the airy student who sits across from her, so results may vary. 

She twists her mouth, studying the picture of the bowl from class on their Blackboard page. 

The lighting is atrocious. 

Professor McGrath should brush up on his photography skills. 

Peter’s phone vibrates against MJ’s nightstand, and she turns her head to watch it light up. 

Michelle sighs, haphazardly shading the top of the banana bunch.

He left for patrol almost two hours ago, promising he’d be quick: a brief survey of Midtown, no trip to Queens, and no angling down to Brooklyn. A Saturday night where her roommate treks home to Pittsburgh to visit her girlfriend leaves the small dorm room open and available. Peter and MJ can take advantage of the weirdly proportioned bed and lumpy mattress.

Her roommate, Bailey, and her girlfriend are an almost omnipresent reminder that MJ and Peter should not complain about distance despite Peter and Ned and their attachment issues both choosing to attend MIT. Peter finds his way home every other weekend with an excuse about helping Miles work a case (“You’re detectives now?”), proving the NYPD is ineffective (“Not the word I would choose, but sure.”), and visiting May (“Tell her I’m almost finished with _The Rules Do Not Apply_, and that I’m going to leave you for a woman who landscapes,” MJ says. “As long as she landscapes.” “That’s the whole point, Peter.” “The landscaping?” “Yes”). 

Sometimes she thinks he returns home bimonthly because he misses her, but MJ would never admit it. 

Bailey and her girlfriend only manage to visit each other every other month, if they’re lucky. To make up for the lack, they phone each other incessantly. Her roommate snorts when she laughs, and sometimes speaks to her girlfriend in a nasally, baby voice. 

The worst is when they whisper dirty little scenarios to each other while MJ attempts to study.

The worst is _also_ her roommate’s weird jealous streak. Whenever Peter comes home for the weekend, Bailey refuses to grant them the dorm, hunkering down on her bed to marathon some inane reality show, or spreading out entire trees worth of packets on the floor, highlighter cap in her mouth, insisting too many distractions breathe in the library and that the floor’s lounge is creepy and potentially haunted. 

It isn’t.

If the floor’s lounge was haunted, MJ would spend more time there. 

At first, MJ thought Bailey’s green rage was sparked by Peter being Spider-Man. The world dealt with that revelation and the lies of Mysterio the year before, causing their senior year to be even more stressful and hellish than expected. But now he's simply a minor celebrity. Occasionally a little kid asks for a picture, or some nerd inquires about web fluid, or some co-ed touches Peter’s arm with intention, and that’s that.

MJ did get kidnapped once, but she didn’t die or anything. 

If she still went to parties, it’d be a fun story to tell, but she’s no longer trying to spend as few minutes as possible in her home. She has a cramped dorm room to occupy, and despite Bailey’s plethora of annoying quirks, she’s much easier to cope with than MJ’s father. 

Through basic deduction skills, MJ has concluded the stick up Bailey’s ass is Peter popping up in person for MJ to touch, to kiss, and to roll her eyes at, face-to-face. Because her roommate’s girlfriend is always in Pittsburgh, and MJ would have more sympathy if it weren’t for the Facetiming sans headphones.

Point is, May walked in on Michelle and Peter one too many times (read: one time), and Bailey’s gone.

Peter should be back by now, and MJ is mildly peeved that he isn’t, but his propensity for being late is only eclipsed by his propensity for goodness, leaving MJ unsurprised.

She tables her sketch and checks her phone for any news on recent crime Peter may have gotten caught up in.

When her search returns zero results, she wanders down the hallway to the bathroom, brushing her teeth and running through her nightly skincare routine. 

She returns to Peter, halfway through her window, mask dangling between his fingers. When she asked why he still wore it, he said it’s to protect Miles’s identity (“You have different suits, idiot.”) and his pretty face (“Yeah, because _that’s_ your moneymaker.” “MJ!” “I’m just kidding. You’re kind of cute.” “Thanks”). 

“Hey,” he says, grin a mile wide. 

Peter always perks up when he first sees her, kind of like a puppy when its owner arrives home. MJ’s working on a less demeaning metaphor, but his reaction still makes her chest feel nice and warm, makes her head go a little hazy.

She drops her shower caddy next to her desk. “Patrol go well?”

“Yeah.” He shrugs, running a hand through his hair. “Nothing too exciting. A kid lost his parents in the park, so I helped him find them again.”

“That’s good. The park’s big,” MJ says, slipping off her bathroom sandals before readjusting her hair-tie.

“Yeah, we walked through half of it and still didn’t see Alice.”

“She’s creepy.” 

The bronze statue has a sinister vibe, Alice’s eyes lifeless voids, the mouse more like a subway rat, and the Hatter’s teeth sharp. 

“I agree.” Peter fumbles over and tilts his head up, brushing a soft kiss against her cheek. “Do you think it’s more or less creepy at night? Want to check it out?”

“Not now.” She smooths her thumb across his eyebrow. “I’m tired.”

“Some other night, then?”

She tips her mouth into a small, sincere smile. “Sounds good, dork.”

Michelle crawls under the freshly washed sheets (Peter didn’t need to find Goldfish crumbs in her bed, and also, she wants him to associate her bed with the subtle scent of her lavender fabric softener. The only person who knows that is nobody, and she plans on keeping it that way until she’s offed by an organized crime syndicate after exposing them for selling drugs to children) and watches Peter hit the spider emblem in the middle of his suit to change into the pajamas stuffed into his overnight bag. 

Peter’s muscles ripple and shift as he dresses, and MJ enjoys looking without embarrassment even if it makes her heart hitch a metronome faster.

“Key’s on my desk,” she says without him needing to ask. 

While Peter’s in the bathroom, MJ whittles time away skimming a news article about the current economic upturn and not liking posts on her Instagram feed.

“A drunk guy is throwing up in one of the stalls,” Peter says, flipping the extra lock on her door before crossing the room to close and lock her window. MJ and Bailey never do, and Peter has stopped telling her they should, but when he stays over, he always makes sure. 

As much for himself as it is for her, MJ supposes. 

“Did you hold his hair back for him?” she asks.

“No, he had a buzz cut.” Peter drops her keys onto her desk, a moment of clatter, the lanyard hanging off the side. He turns on her cheap desk lamp. The light is a soft, warm glow. 

“Makes it a little harder.”

Peter turns off the overhead fluorescents. “Kind of impossible.”

“Maybe,” MJ concedes. 

She likes this, talking to him with nothing pressing to say, idle chatter that doesn’t mean anything but doesn’t possess the uncomfortable, fidgeting air attempting small talk with acquaintances does. 

With Peter, MJ likes everything: the useless banter, the summaries of their mundane days, and the serious conversations where he opens up to her (the ones that go the other way around are more difficult to like, but she’s yet to regret sharing her secrets with him).

He slips in next to her, pulling the covers up higher. “Hey,” he whispers.

“Why are you whispering?” she whispers back.

“I don’t know. I always feel like I’m supposed to whisper in the dark. Maybe it’s from sleeping over at Ned’s house? We’d stay up talking when we were supposed to be asleep and didn’t want his parents to catch us.”

“Did they?” MJ asks. She can’t believe she cares, but she does. 

“Half the time,” he admits. 

“You’ve always been terrible secret keepers.”

His toe runs up her shin. “Maybe you could teach us. Like secret keeping bootcamp.”

MJ’s brow creases. “Why would I teach my boyfriend how to keep secrets?” 

“So when Bailey asks if you ate her last cup of noodles, I can say, ‘No,’ and she’ll believe me.”

“You’re so stupid,” MJ says.

“Probably,” Peter agrees.

His eyes are wide and fond in the soft lamp light, warm in a way that makes her insides feel like hot chocolate on a cold day. She would have pointed the lamp out earlier to prove they’re not actually in the dark, except Peter would just reach up and turn it off, and Michelle wants to really look at him, study the almost faded bruise across his cheekbone. 

“Lucky for you, I like stupid,” she says.

“No, you don’t.”

His toe moves again, up and down her shin. 

“I like you, and you’re stupid. Ergo, I like stupid.”

“Airtight logic, MJ,” Peter says, beaming at her. 

She has no choice but to close the minimal space between their mouths. It’s gentle, familiar, and Peter may be the only person she’s ever kissed besides Sally one time during a game of Truth or Dare at one of Flash’s godawful parties, but MJ doesn’t think she’ll ever tire of it. It’s not always stomach-flipping or toe-curling, but it’s always good. 

Peter cups her cheek with his palm, calloused thumb swiping back and forth over her skin, and she leans into him until he tips back. She spreads her hand across his chest, running up to fiddle with the worn collar of his sleep-shirt. His skin always feels just a touch warmer than Michelle expects, and he’s solid underneath her, all muscle and heart.

His hand slides back, fingertips brushing underneath her hairband, and she deepens the kiss.

It’s slow, his other hand flexing against her hip. This could be enough for tonight. Peter’s mouth hot against hers, low groan as she slips her tongue against his. It could be enough to soothe her, warm embers of fire heating up her skin to go with the hot chocolate feeling in her gut, but MJ’s not as sleepy as she pretended to be. 

His fingers itch their way under the old _Star Wars_ shirt she stole from him, palm spreading against the dip of her lower back. Peter ducks his head, presses wet, open-mouthed kisses underneath her jaw.

She’s about to ask him how he got better at this since she last saw him, what kind of secrets he’s keeping, just so he’ll stutter underneath her, but his phone vibrates with a call. 

He kisses the curve at the back of her jaw. 

“Aren’t you going to answer that?” she asks. 

“It’s not important,” he mumbles against her skin. 

Michelle lifts herself off him to look at his phone. “It’s Ned,” she says. “He’s calling you.”

“I’ll text him back tomorrow.” Peter squeezes her side. 

His phone stops buzzing, and MJ smirks at him. “You’re a terrible friend.”

“Ned will get over it.” 

“You sure?” She scoots back down, moment paused. 

“We survived The Great Disaster of 7th Grade, so I think we’ll be able to handle this.”

“What if he’s been taken and the kidnapper is calling you so Spider-Man will come save his best friend?” MJ asks. 

Peter huffs. “He’s running a comp. sci. program for a class I took last semester, and he said he’d call me if he hit a snag.”

“That’s even worse!” MJ smacks Peter.

His eyes widen, brows raised, offense written all over his face. “How is that worse?”

“You could take the call and help him with his homework, which would take what, five minutes? But you’re thinking with your dick instead of your heart.”

“It could take two hours to figure out what’s wrong, MJ.”

“Two hours?” 

“I’m thinking with my dick _and_ my heart,” he clarifies.

MJ laughs despite herself, rolling her eyes. “Loser,” she says, kissing him again. His phone vibrates, just once. “He left you a voicemail. Maybe it’s the kidnappers telling you the ransom.”

“I’ll get back to them tomorrow. It’s bad to negotiate with bad guys, anyway.” Peter’s hand edges up her stomach, fingertips brushing against the underside of her breast. 

“We both know you don’t answer voicemails, Peter.” A beat. “And you always try to negotiate with bad guys.”

“I try to change their minds. There’s a difference.” He kisses her again, speaking against her lips. “And I do answer my voicemails.”

“You never answered mine,” she says, tugging at the hem of his t-shirt. 

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing.”

“Wait, MJ.” His hand finds hers, foiling her attempt to rid him of his shirt. “What do you mean I never answer your voicemails? You never leave any.”

“You’re right. I don’t.”

His eyes flit over her face, narrow and searching. He slots his fingers between hers, palm pressed to the back of her hand. “What did you mean?”

“It’s nothing,” she repeats, aiming for flippant and landing somewhere near fraught. Michelle’s stomach clenches, and she wrestles with the urge to break eye contact. 

“Em,” Peter insists.

His genuine eyes don’t make her feel any less embarrassed, but she does surrender the truth. It’s more natural than hiding it from him. “I don’t leave any voicemails because you always answer when I call.”

He nods, pressing his fingertips more firmly against her palm. 

“But you didn’t used to pick up, or answer my texts, or returns my calls.” His eyebrows wrinkle, and she ignores the desire to smooth them out. Instead, she props herself up on her elbow and stares down at him. “Sophomore year.”

“Sophomore year,” Peter repeats, gaze scrutinizing and steady. “I don’t-- Wait, I think I do remember you calling me. But I don’t think I ever listened to your voicemails. Maybe once or twice but--”

“--We weren’t even friends,” MJ cuts him off. She can feel her face flushing hot. “No big deal.”

An infinite stretch of silence follows. 

“It was a big deal to you,” Peter says.

“No.”

“It was nothing personal, MJ. I promise. My time management wasn’t the best back then.” 

MJ would snort because his time management still isn’t up to par, but she’s currently too busy wishing for something as cliche as a portal opening up and swallowing her whole, casting her into another dimension or universe far away from this one where Peter is going to realize how pathetically gone for him she was before he even bothered to look at her twice. 

“I was always exhausted. And I figured if it was really important, you’d tell me the next day,” he says.

“I know. I get it.” 

He holds her hand properly now, offering a reassuring squeeze. “I’m sorry that I hurt your feelings.”

She scoffs. 

“I am,” he earnestly insists. 

“Don’t worry about it, Peter. I stopped expecting you to call me back.”

She thinks it’s going to loosen him up and allow them to transition back to making out, but Peter’s frown deepens. “I didn’t know you cared that much about me.”

“I called you multiple times a week.”

MJ can practically hear a timer ticking down in his head. His eyes widen, his mouth drops open into a small little ‘o,’ and the timer buzzes. “You liked me?”

She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, nerd. I did.”

“Wow,” he says, breathless and reverent. “I’m so stupid.”

“We’ve established that.”

“_Wow_. That’s insane, MJ. I can’t believe you liked me even before,” he pauses. And she fills in the blank: before the blip, before I liked you. “You _liked_ me?” he asks. 

“Yeah. But I’m rethinking the whole ‘liking you now’ thing.”

He traces the curve of her ear while tucking a wisp of hair behind it. “I’m so sorry, MJ. I was so stupid. I love you so much.”

“It’s fine. I know you do.” She allows her arm to fold like a house of cards, head resting on the edge of her pillow. 

Peter’s face holds his concern and sympathy, plain and transparent, so MJ leans forward, offering a chaste kiss. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. 

“I’m serious; don’t worry about it. That was over seven years ago.” She smirks, because if blip jokes aren’t funny, then they’re sad and traumatic, and MJ refuses to let perfectly stupid math humor slide. 

“Fine,” Peter sighs, thumb rubbing back and forth over her hand.

MJ scoots up to reach across the top of her bed, twisting off the lamp light, emotionally exhausted enough to give in to the pull of sleep before midnight on a Saturday. 

**11:16 AM.**

Michelle hitches her bag higher onto her shoulder and follows the line of students leaving their economics final. A distant pulse throbs behind her temples. She needs to hit up a coffee shop before her headache manifests, and then, counter-intuitive to the caffeine, she needs to take a nap. 

Hillary catches her a couple of strides into the hallway. “What’d you think?” she asks.

MJ shrugs. “Not bad. A few of the multiple choice questions tripped me up, but I feel confident about all the short answer ones.”

“For the question about injections in a four-sector economy being greater than the withdrawals, what did you put?”

“Planned spending will be greater than the output, output will probably increase, and actual investment will be less than planned.”

Hillary nods. “But planned investment doesn’t have to exceed planned savings?”

“No,” MJ says, turning her phone back on. 

“Oh.” Hillary’s mouth presses into a small frown. “I think I got that one wrong.”

“It’s fine. There were three questions about the AS-AD model that I spent ten minutes trying to figure out.”

“At least we never have to think about econ. again,” Hillary says. 

Michelle’s phone vibrates awake against her palm. “You should probably still think about your own financials.”

“Or I could let my dad do that and marry someone who understands money better than I do.” Hillary laughs blithely. 

“That’s an option,” MJ agrees. Her phone buzzes again, and her eyebrow wrinkles. 

“Are you done with finals?”

“I have ethics tomorrow,” she says, unlocking her cell. There’s a missed call from Peter, and a voicemail left in its wake. 

Panic shutters through her, but she keeps her expression neutral. 

“That sucks.” Hillary holds the door open for her, and MJ nods in thanks. “Econ. was it for me. I’m catching a train to Albany at five.”

They part at the light. Hillary heads left, and MJ crosses before the walk sign flashes. 

She exhales, calling her voicemail. Her stomach clenches, and Michelle pushes down the worst case scenarios threatening to tangle themselves around her synapses. Worry about Peter and his well-being isn’t new to her. He knew about her final, and he’s not someone who tends to call unless he’s sent a text first. 

Her anxiety dissipates the moment she hears his voice.

“Hey MJ,” he says. “Or, MJ’s voicemail. You know you never personalized it?”

She does. 

Personalizing her voicemail message is an extra risk she deems unnecessary.

“Anyway, it’s Peter. I know you’re in your econ. final, and I know you were worried about it. But you knew all those notecards when I quizzed you last weekend, so I know you’ll ace the test. Just wanted to say I’m sending you positive like, vibes, or something. I know you’ll tell me that won’t affect your performance or whatever, but still. Good luck. Love you!”

_End of messages_ the automated woman’s voice says. 

MJ bites around her smile and returns his call. 

“Hey loser.”

“MJ! How’d it go?”

“Fine.” She presses her phone closer to her ear, zig-zagging around a pair of slow walking women. “You do know I wrote those notecards myself, so they’re not an accurate measure of what was on the test and my ability to know relevant information, don’t you?” 

“Are you saying you’re bad at studying?”

“No.”

“Of course not,” he says. She can hear the affectionate smile in his voice, picturing it with ease. “Besides, you were acadec captain, and we won nationals. That’s pretty solid proof that you’re excellent at making notecards.”

“I’m not actually arguing with you, Peter.”

“I know.”

“Good.”

She turns the corner. She can’t smell the coffee from her favorite independent shop through the cologne of the businessman in a pressed suit in front of her or the smoke and garbage that permeates every block of the city, but her head longs for it. 

“When will you get the results?” Peter asks.

MJ shrugs. “Grades are due next Friday, and Dr. Williams is terrible at posting scores in a timely manner, so probably next Friday.”

“Ugh,” Peter commiserates. “But I’m sure you passed.”

“Obviously I passed.” She edges around somebody stopped in the middle of the sidewalk to reach the coffee shop’s door. “I want my actual score.”

“I can already tell you that you got an ‘A.’”

“You can’t know that.”

“But I do,” he insists. “You’re the smartest person I’ve ever met.”

MJ’s insides idiotically bubble with pride and fondness because she knows Peter means it despite his previous menteeship with Tony Stark and all the college professors currently teaching him about coding, chemical reactions and biology. If she challenged him to reassess that statement, he’d realize it’s not true, but it’s nice that he instinctively believes it. 

“Thanks,” she says, letting it slide and joining the line behind a woman even taller than her. “I’m getting coffee and then studying for my ethics final, but I’ll talk to you later.”

“Alright. Talk to you later. And see you in ten days!”

MJ tucks her lips in to keep her smile from growing. “Okay, nerd. I love you.”

“Love you, too.”

She hangs up, orders a small dark roast, and when she gets her results on the day of the deadline, she’s pleased with her 94%. 

**4:38 PM.**

MJ tosses her diluted soda into the trash can along with the bag of popcorn kernels. She blinks as her eyes adjust to the lights of the theater outside her screening and power-walks to the women’s bathroom before everyone else in the showing gets there first.

She prefers to see movies alone. Ned is too reactive, always gasping in shock, laughing over the lines following a joke, and screaming, “I knew it!” during a film’s climax. Peter is vocal, too, but he’s distracting in different ways. He likes to hold her hand. He bumps his shoulder against hers when there’s a moment he likes or thinks she’ll appreciate, and he leans over to ask about her initial reaction to a scene, if she wants a red hot or soda refill. 

If MJ’s not particularly excited about a movie, or if she doesn’t think it’ll require her full attention, she’s happy to go with the nerd herd, but if it’s something she wants to absorb fully, she attends alone, purchasing popcorn without butter and sitting in the last row of seats without dissenting opinions.

Peter left her a voicemail in the middle of this one. 

And just like the last time, Michelle fights down the initial welling of fear that originates in her gut. She goes to the bathroom, washes her hands, and sits on a hard, uncomfortable bench in the lobby to listen. 

“Hi MJ, it’s Peter.” 

She huffs out an amused breath. Of course it’s Peter. He and her summer internship boss are the only two people who ever leave her voicemails, and this is only the second one he’s ever left. He sounds calm, no edge of pain or distraction in his voice, and MJ rolls her shoulders back, relieved. 

“May and I were getting lunch, and now we’re at Washington Square Park.”

In the background, she hears May: “Tell her I say, ‘Hi.’” Then, marginally louder: “Hi MJ!”

“She says, ‘Hi,’ by the way,” Peter adds.

Michelle watches a trickle of moviegoers stream out of the theater. They’re mostly older people; women and men with graying hair. That’s the kind of crowd the movie MJ saw attracts at 2:30 in the afternoon on a weekday. Families with young children begin to congregate. A showing of the newest animation feature must be starting soon. 

“So, we’re at the park, and there are a lot of pigeons here,” Peter continues. “They’re not afraid of anyone, either. Real New York pigeons. One of them pooped on a tourist’s head.” He laughs, and MJ bites the inside of her cheek, mouth twitching up. “You’d have found it really funny, Em.

“It made me think of the pigeons in Venice, and how much they loved you. I don’t know if you know I saw that? You kind of remind me of a pigeon.” He pauses, and MJ can hear the faint lilt of May’s voice. When Peter continues, his words are vaguely panicked: “No! Don’t be offended! Like I said, they loved you, and they pooped on a tourist, so maybe pigeons are just good judges of character? I don’t know.

“I hope your movie was good. I’ll see you at Ned’s at seven. I’ll try not to be late. Love you.”

“I love you, too!” May calls. 

Peter huffs. “May wants me to tell you that she loves you, too. Bye, MJ.”

**1:33 PM.**

MJ receives a notification about Spider-Man’s fight with the Rhino downtown. 

Her instinct is to read the article, refresh constantly for updates, and flip on a news station to watch any live footage. Her stomach drops, and she wipes her palms against her dress pants. 

By now she knows that tracking Peter’s every move and following his superheroing in real time hurts her mental state more than it helps. Unless she’s with Ned and connected to Peter’s comms., there’s nothing she can do. The helpless feeling of watching only expands the dread swirling through her chest like ink spilling onto paper. 

She breathes in and out steadily, turning her phone over on her desk. She keeps it on silent while at her internship, but she needs to further reduce the urge to look at it. 

Michelle has work to do other than worry. She writes up an email summarizing their company’s talking points about a high profile immigration case and sends it out. She inputs data into a convoluted system her boss swears is useful. MJ disagrees, but when she tried to explain why, her boss dismissed her with a patronizing flick of her wrist. 

She places her boss’s lunch order before taking her break.

Cautiously, MJ reaches for her phone.

She sees the voicemail from Peter right away, and instead of inspiring a new fount of panic, it allows her to exhale. 

Thank god. 

Biting into the peanut butter and jelly sandwich she packed, MJ reads a news article recounting Peter’s fight with the Rhino. He was able to flee, but Spider-Man still saved the day. The comments underneath give importance to one or the other: Mary from the Upper West Side insists law enforcement would have caught the Rhino and that a young kid like Spider-Man is hindering their ability to do their job, while Retta from Brooklyn thanks Spider-Man for helping the innocent bystanders. 

Michelle tires of the uninformed takes around the time a blonde girl from Tribeca veers off-topic to add that Spider-Man looks good in his suit (true) and is too hot for his girlfriend (give MJ a fucking break).

She closes out of the article, leans back in her rickety office chair, and calls her voicemail. 

_You have_ one _new message_.

“Hi! It’s Peter. You’ve probably seen the news by now, but I’m fine. I don’t know why I’m telling you that if you’ve seen the news. Sorry.

“I was just wondering, that badass opera singer who challenged men to duels and stuff? I promise I remember everything you tell me,” he says, voice dropping low and careful before he continues, “but I forgot her name. I’m sorry about that, too. But I did get hit in the head an hour ago, if you want to cut me some slack.”

MJ fishes her apple out of her lunch bag. The flesh is soft instead of crunchy, and her thumb fits against a bruise on one side. She isn’t fond of cheap, off-season apples, but she’ll nibble at it regardless. 

“So, if you have a free moment, a reminder of her name would be cool. Um. That’s all.” Peter audibly exhales.

“Actually, I love you. That too. So. That’s really all. Bye, Em. Have a good day, and if your boss is a jerk, tell her Spider-Man hates her.” A beat. “Don’t say that. You’ll probably get in trouble if you say that. I love you. Bye.”

MJ bites into her apple and grimaces at the mealy texture before setting it on a napkin. 

She texts Peter: _Julie D’Aubigny, or Mademoiselle Maupin._

_thanks!_

_No problem._

_love u!_

She sends: _Google is free_, and follows it up with, _I love you, too._

**8:51 PM.**

MJ, Peter and Ned are cramped together on the small futon in the living room of Peter and Ned’s off-campus apartment. Ned’s laptop is hooked up to the small television, an old episode of _Drag Race_ playing. 

“Come on, Alyssa,” Ned chants. “Come on, come on, come on.”

MJ frowns. “You’re kidding?”

“Why would I be kidding?” 

“Because she’s writhing around onstage and blocking her mouth because she probably doesn’t know all the words. Roxxxy just did a wig under a wig reveal.”

Ned scrambles up, pressing pause. “Roxxxy’s so mean, MJ.”

She narrows her eyes. Her mouth thins. 

“He just means that Alyssa’s whipping her hair like the song says,” Peter offers softly. He fidgets next to her. “She’s not doing a bad job.”

“Not that lip syncing is about who’s nicer, and not that Alyssa is super nice all the time, but don’t you want to see her go up against Coco?” Ned asks.

“I want to see the person who did the better job be rewarded for it.”

“Me too!”

MJ lifts her foot onto the futon, pulling her leg closer with a hand on her shin. “No. You’re buying the narrative the show is sowing about Roxxxy being a bully to Jinkx. Your argument is predicated on a moral high ground that doesn’t really exist.”

“No, it’s not!”

“Your initial point was that she’s mean, Leeds.”

“But she is!”

“Let’s just finish the episode, okay?” Peter says. “We don’t all have to agree.”

“But you think Roxxxy is mean, too!” 

MJ turns her attention to her boyfriend. 

Peter glares at his best friend, exasperated sigh whistling out of his mouth. “Ned,” he warns.

“Of course you think she’s mean,” MJ says. “I know you hate Rolaskatox. Naming their clique is juvenile and ridiculous, but it shouldn’t influence how they’re judged when their drag is setting the bar.”

Peter scratches at the back of his neck. “I just think with the influence the show has that Jinkx’s story could positively affect people in a way Roxxxy’s can’t.”

“The season is years old,” MJ says. 

“You know what I mean,” Peter pleads with soft, wide eyes, like he thinks MJ might actually judge him based on his _Drag Race_ opinions. He’s such a loser. 

“I do think narrative is important on a fake reality television show,” MJ concedes. “But Alyssa is also mean, and Roxxxy knows her words. She’s not lip syncing against Jinkx, so that argument is a distraction from what we’re talking about.”

“I didn’t say I wanted Alyssa to beat Roxxxy.”

“I know.” A beat. “But Ned does.”

Ned groans.

MJ smirks at him, suggesting that both he and Peter are susceptible to producer manipulation. It makes the boys sputter, faces flushing red because they realize she’s correct despite arguing for another minute that she’s not. 

It’s kind of a moot point in the end. Both Roxxxy and Alyssa get to stay.

The viewing party breaks up after that. Ned remains in the living room-kitchen combo, disconnecting his laptop from the television to search for information that will bolster his threadbare argument. 

Peter and MJ get ready for bed, and he lets her use the bathroom first. She slides underneath his sheets, face clean and mouth minty, while Peter leaves to brush his teeth. 

She grabs her phone from the nightstand to while away a few minutes. 

It confuses her to see the voicemail notification from Peter.

“You’re right, as usual,” he says. “Roxxxy’s lip sync _was_ better. Alyssa didn’t know all the words. I only know that because May and I have watched the season a few times, and the queens talk about it on _Untucked_. Of course you saw it right away. God, you’re amazing. Um, I think I hear you talking to Ned, so I’m going to hang up now. See you in a minute.”

She puts her phone back on Peter’s nightstand, trying to figure out why he left a message instead of backing her up with Ned or waiting for her to crawl into bed and having the conversation in person. 

She can’t come up with a logical reason.

He’s taken her side against Ned before. The entire back half of senior year, he valiantly put up with stupid comments from Flash about how he only ever agreed with MJ because he was whipped. Any theory along those lines doesn’t track. 

Peter slowly cracks his door open, smile sheepish as he closes it behind him. “It’s kind of early. Do you really want to go to sleep?”

“I got your message,” she says.

“Yeah?”

“I’m confused.”

Peter’s eyebrows furrow. “About what?”

“The voicemails you keep leaving me,” she says.

“Oh.” He visibly tenses, shuffling the few inches between the door and his bed before sitting on the edge of the mattress. “Are they annoying?”

MJ studies him. His mouth pressed flat, shoulders pulling up toward his ears, and fingers picking at a thread from his pajama pants. They hang low on his hips, and MJ likes them. 

“Are you,” she starts, tongue thick and heavy with disappointment at the answer her brain conjures up. “Are you doing this because you feel guilty about not answering the ones I left you sophomore year?”

MJ hates it. 

She hates the idea that Peter calls her out of some misplaced obligation to make it up to her. It ruins something she was just beginning to get used to, her mind no longer picturing a call from a bloodied and bruised Peter, voice weak as he tells her he loves her one last time before exhaling his last breath. 

It makes her feel worse than all her unanswered texts and messages ever did. Acts of love out of pity don’t count, and her breath goes shallow and sharp. 

“No,” Peter says. His head snaps up to look at her. “No.” 

He clears his throat. 

“I mean, yeah, that’s where the idea came from, I guess. But I like leaving them. I think about you all the time, MJ. Because I see the shampoo you use when I’m shopping with Ned. Or a professor says something I know you’d disagree with. Or because I haven’t heard the sound of your voice in 48 hours, and I miss you.”

“Are you serious?” she asks.

“I promise it’s not because I feel bad about that, even though I do.”

She frowns, and he shakes his head. 

“If I know you’re busy and your phone is off or on silent, instead of texting, I’ll call and leave a message so you know I’m thinking about you.” He shrugs. “I like the idea that you could save them. Listen to them if you miss my voice, too.”

She has no idea how Peter guessed that she saves them. It makes her heart pitter-patter in her chest, and his mouth tugs up into a sweet smile, and she concludes he can hear it with his stupid spider hearing. 

It’s really unfair. 

“You can keep leaving them,” she says, blinking back pointless tears. 

His grin grows from the brightness in his eyes, the two things connected like flowers blooming in the sun’s light, and he leans forward to kiss her. 

“You’re the only person I want to tell everything,” she whispers.

“You can,” he assures her. “You can tell me anything.”

“Okay.”

She kisses him, languid and deep, running her hands through his hair. His palm is warm against her neck as he leans over her, other hand coming to rest by her side, thumb just barely underneath her thigh. 

“I’ll keep leaving them,” he promises against her jaw.

MJ doesn’t usually believe anyone when they make promises. It’s too easy to forget, and people change.They make promises they think they want to keep, but then they realize they didn’t actually mean it.

Maybe she’s too in love to be reasonable.

**9:19 AM.**

Exhaustion and frustration pull at MJ as she leaves her advising meeting. She zips up her coat and wraps her scarf around her neck. When she pulls her hat out of her pocket, a glove falls to the floor. She huffs, struggling to bend down in her stiff winter coat and pick it up. 

Someone bumps into her on the way down the stairs, and she calls, “Watch where you’re going, asshole!” over her shoulder. 

Her meeting didn’t go the way she planned, she has a 10 AM game theory class with a complete dick of a professor, and an essay due tomorrow she still hasn’t cracked.

Michelle considers dropping out of university her second semester of sophomore year. She could move to Boston, crash at Peter and Ned’s, waiting tables in her spare time and advising them on their academic plans with a level of success the hack she just spoke to could only dream of. 

She swings her backpack around so she can tug out her phone before she exits the building. 

Michelle scowls at the freezing wind brushing against her already chapped cheeks, but she feels a spark of warmth at the notification that pops up on her screen. She tugs off a glove so she can call her voicemail and listen to Peter’s message. 

If she gets frostbite in the ten seconds the thin skin of her fingers is exposed to the air, she’ll send him her medical bills. 

“Hey MJ. It’s Peter.”

It’s ridiculous how she already feels better.

“Ned and I were getting coffee before our 8 AMs this morning, and we overheard a joke. It’s really bad, so please don’t break up with me if you hate it.”

She exhales an amused sort of sound, annoyed at the way her breath clouds up in front of her nose. She picks up her pace to cross at the intersection before the light changes. 

“Knock, knock,” Peter says.

The quiet lasts so long, that as her foot hits the opposite curb, she tugs her cell away from her ear to check that her phone isn’t going haywire. 

“--not going to ask, ‘Who’s there?’ but you could surprise me. You do that a lot, but I’ll do both parts, just in case.

“Knock knock,” he repeats. Then, in a lower voice, “Who’s there?” Back to normal: “To.” Gravelly Batman voice: “To who?”

A beat of anticipation stretches, and Michelle hears Peter chuckle to himself like even he knows this is absurd.

“It’s, ‘To whom,’” he finishes. 

MJ laughs, throaty and sudden, and she smacks her hand over her mouth to cover the loud, undignified sound.

“Ned and I thought it was pretty funny. And grammar reminds me of you, since you’re always proofreading my essays and stuff. Which, I appreciate, by the way. It’s really awesome of you to do that for free. Or, you know, for,” he pauses, voice dropping low in an entirely different way than before, “other favors.”

MJ’s eyes dart to the other New Yorkers hustling through the city, paying no attention to anyone but themselves and their own destinations, before ducking her head and allowing the goofy, fond smile she saves for Peter to paint itself onto her mouth for a fleeting moment. 

“I hope your meeting went well. I’ll text you after differential equations. Love you. Bye, MJ.”

She shoves her hands into her coat pockets, phone still clutched in her palm, and swerves around a group of women chatting outside a brunch place. 

MJ feels lighter, fortified, as she turns sharply, skidding to a halt at the bus stop. She can attend game theory, write her paper, and still find time to start the newest Karen Tei Yamashita release. 

She can do anything.

Fuck her adviser. 

**3:11 PM.**

Yeshua smiles at her, holding his hand up for a high-five. “Good work, Jones.”

MJ eyes him before lightly hitting her palm against his. “You too.”

“We’re going to completely destroy our presentation tomorrow. Higgins will have never seen such a thorough take down of Pollard.”

“Probably not.”

“When we get an ‘A,’ do you want to go out for celebratory drinks?” he asks.

“What?” Michelle says, pressing on her phone so it lights up. 

Peter called during the run-through of their presentation, and she didn’t answer to be polite and to avoid messing up their timing (if it isn’t between 15 and 20 minutes, Higgins vows it’s an automatic five point deduction, and MJ believes her).

She also didn’t answer so Peter would leave a message. She sees the voicemail notification, even if her security settings block any other information from appearing while her phone is locked. They haven’t seen each other in a month because he’s been bogged down with schoolwork, and between classes, internship applications, and avoiding her dad asking her to ask Peter for money, because something about his connection to Stark Industries has finally clicked in her father’s brain, she’s been busy and stressed. 

It’s not the longest they’ve gone without seeing each other. Senior year of high school still reigns supreme, but it’s been too long. Maybe Michelle should’ve been nicer and more understanding with Bailey freshman year, but she hasn’t seen her since they parted ways and doesn’t plan on reaching out.

It’s gross, but MJ misses Peter.

“Drinks after class?” Yeshua asks.

“Class is in the middle of the afternoon.”

“We get out after five,” he tries. “And it’s a lot better than eight in the morning.”

She pulls her phone closer. “I don’t know. I don’t really drink.”

“Oh. I mean. Coffee?”

Yeshua is smart, punctual and nice. He did his fair share of their presentation without MJ having to threaten him. His hair is thick and dark, and his jaw is sharp and angular in an aesthetically pleasing way. 

“I have a boyfriend,” she says.

“Oh my god. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” He blanches, running a hand through his hair and standing abruptly. “I’m just going to leave, and when I see you tomorrow, I’m going to pretend I never asked.”

“Okay.” Michelle offers a small, crooked smile. It’s the nicest thing she can think to do. She doesn’t feel badly about being honest or about delivering the truth bluntly with no fancy words to ease Yeshua into it. 

She’s actually pleased he didn’t know. It’s a nice reminder that not everybody is obsessed with superheroes and digging into their personal lives. 

“See you tomorrow,” she adds.

“Yeah. Bye, MJ.”

The study room door closes behind him, and she chews on her lip, reaching back to tighten her ponytail before listening to Peter’s voicemail. 

“Hi MJ. I know you think it’s stupid, but this is Peter. Just in case you changed my name in your phone to something like _Idiot_ or _Insect Boy_ and are confused now because spiders aren’t insects and the joke isn’t funny anymore. Or maybe my voice changed overnight. I don’t know. But it’s Peter.”

She leans back in her chair, closing her eyes against the harsh fluorescents and focusing on Peter’s rambling.

“Johnny took me to a hole-in-the-wall coffee shop today. I had the best cinnamon scone. It was unbelievable, MJ. Seriously. When you come down next weekend we have to go. You’ll love it. There’s a nook where you can sit and read or draw or study.” He laughs, light and airy, and she presses her phone closer like she’ll be able to feel the breath of it on her face. 

She’s so gone for him it’s sick. 

“Because we’re college juniors now, and we have to do that sometimes. But um, I just wanted to tell you that and ask how your day’s going.” He pauses, and MJ rolls her neck from side to side.

“I miss you, Em. Um, call me back. Text me first. I’m in class until nine, and then I have like 200 pages of science jargon to read, but I’ll pick up. Promise. I love you. Bye.”

She bites at her lip, sets her phone on the table and forms a pillow with her arms, leaning her forehead against her wrist. He’s in DNA damage and genomic instability by now, which is as long a title for a course as all his other highly specific, ridiculously titled, dork classes. 

She misses him. 

It’s weird, and her over-dramatic brain can only come up with analogies along the lines of phantom limbs. It’s awful, and Michelle hates it. 

When she calls tonight, Peter will tell her how many more days, hours and minutes until he picks her up at the train station next weekend. 

He misses her, too.

He misses her just as much, and it makes it a little easier. 

**2:06 AM.**

Michelle’s alarm goes off at 7 AM. 

She has class in an hour. It’s the only time the course was offered. 

Art students are relatively rare at non-arts-centered universities, and scheduling like this is bound to discourage people. No college student cares about 19th and 20th century art history enough to wake up for an 8 AM. 

Except MJ and her classmates, apparently, because they’ve committed to this, and it’s the last elective she needs to check off to finish her minor before her senior project. It’s a passion project she occasionally allows herself to regret because it’s made university harder and more complicated than it needed to be. Doing the work has taken some of the fun out of sketching, but she does enjoy sparing with pretentious art bros with greasy hair who believe they’re god’s gift to performance until the light leaves their eyes and they swallow down whatever misogynistic insult they’d spew if they didn’t realize it’d make them even more transparent. 

It’s give and take, and as she shuts off her alarm’s incessant beeping, rubbing at her eyes, it feels like take. 

She squints at a notification on her phone. 

Peter called her. 

At two in the morning while her phone was set to do not disturb. 

Michelle hasn’t felt panic about Peter calling her for almost two years, but the timing of it causes her stomach to drop before she realizes that if something did happen, she’d have a lot more than one missed call and message from him.

She rolls onto her back and dials her voicemail.

“Hey Em,” he says loudly. 

She winces. 

“God, you’re great. You know that?” His words slur, and she can hear the faint thump of bass in the background. “So, so great. I love you so much. Like … _this much_.” Michelle hears a scuttle she can’t decipher before Peter speaks clearly again. “Ned and Johnny say you can’t see how much, and they’re laughing at me.” 

MJ bites around a grin. She can hear the pout in his voice. 

“But it’s a lot. Trust me. I want you all the time. I want,” he huffs in frustration. 

“I want-- I want,” he repeats, like his brain is murky and he has to swim through the sludge to pinpoint the thing he wants the most. “I want to wake up with your curls in my face in the morning, and I want you to get mad at me when I throw my dirty clothes on the floor, and I want to marry you, Em. I want to have our babies.”

She laughs, toes curling in her sheets. 

“I mean-- that’s not.” He groans. “You know what I mean. You always do.”

“Hang up, dude!” Ned yells. “You’re embarrassing yourself.”

“Be quiet,” Peter hisses. “I’m on the phone with MJ.”

There’s more background noise before Peter’s replaced by Ned. “Sorry about that, MJ. He’s drunk. He wants me to tell you that he loves you.” A pause. “He wants me to tell you that I love you, too.” Another pause. “Right, not the same way, Peter. She knows that.” 

MJ feels the sun radiating warmth from her stomach and chest, shooting out of her fingers and toes. She feels wide awake, heart hammering against her ribs to a sanguine melody she didn’t realize she knew but feels like muscle memory. 

“Sorry about your boyfriend. He’ll talk to you when he’s hungover. Bye, MJ.”

She doesn’t have time to listen again. 

She thinks about it as she gets ready, throwing her backpack over her shoulder and catching a train to class. 

She sends Peter a text while in transit: _How’s your head?_

_havent had any complaints_

She didn’t think she could love him any more. 

Turns out, once in a blue moon, she’s wrong. 

**9:48 PM / 1:41 AM.**

She drops her bag by the door, toes off her shoes, and tosses her spring jacket onto a kitchen chair. 

Peter scrawled a sloppy note and left it under an old paperweight on the kitchen table: _went patrolling. be back soon!_

MJ changes out of her work clothes, gulps down half a glass of water, and grabs a bag of chips out of the cabinet before settling onto the sofa with a book. She rubs where her neck curves into her shoulder to dispel some tension that’s gathered there throughout the week, glancing at her phone between one chapter and the next. 

She worked beyond overtime, trying to help people the system disadvantages. Often times, working within the system is an exercise in disheartening futility. The system is broken. But she tries to help. It’s the best she can do right now. 

Her stomach grumbles.

She opens the refrigerator expecting to scrounge around for anything that’ll help fill a sandwich. Instead, there’s a carton of takeout from her favorite Thai place. Peter drew a smiley and heart onto it.

She calls him. 

He picks up. 

“Hey MJ. Sorry. This guy has hostages. I’ll be home as--”

“Hang up, Peter.”

“What?” he asks, distracted. 

She leans against their kitchen counter, staring at their tiny living room: the wilting plant on the coffee table, the enormous television Peter insisted he and Ned needed for video games, and the small bookcase they spent an afternoon building together. 

“Just hang up, dork. When I call back, send me to voicemail.”

“Oh. Okay. Sure.”

He doesn’t hang up, so she tells him again. 

“I will. I love you, MJ. Be home soon.”

“Hang up,” she repeats. 

When she calls back, Peter sends her to voicemail like he promised.

He’s not perfect, and he doesn’t always keep his, but he tries his best. 

He keeps the important ones.

“Hey Peter. How do you usually do this? Oh, right. It’s MJ.” She bites at the corner of her mouth and crosses one ankle over the other. “I had a really long week. A really bad day. A client tried to enter the country for his father’s funeral, but they stopped him at customs. They wouldn’t let him in.” She swallows and shuts her eyes. 

“They sent him back to the Philippines. I know we did everything we could. But it sucks.”

Her exhale is shaky and watery. MJ wipes at her eyes. 

“I’ll tell you more about it later. And I know you’ll hug me and reassure me there was nothing else I could’ve done. You’ll agree with everything I say, and you’ll genuinely feel empathy for him. I love that about you.”

She rolls her shoulders back. 

“Thanks for picking up dinner. Thanks for leaving me stupid voicemails. Thanks for … being you. That sounds stupid, right? Who else could you possibly be? I don’t know.” She laughs weakly, exhausted but amused. “I love you so much. I didn’t think I would ever love someone like this. I didn’t think anyone would ever love me the way you do. You’re the best person I know, Peter.”

She clears her throat, feeling vulnerable and exposed. Her voice is raw, and her entire body feels sore. 

“I wanted to leave a voicemail you could save and listen to over and over again, but I think this one might be too depressing for that. Sorry. This is so weird. I don’t know how you do it.” MJ’s lungs feel too small, and her heart beats heavily. When she inhales, the apartment smells faintly like Peter: a little bit of dirt, a little bit of lavender deodorant with an inane line written on it about manly men, and a little bit like a mushy thing she refuses to name.

“I love you. I trust you. Whatever you want with me? I want it. We live together, so you can cross that off the list, I guess,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Everything else, too.” She clears her throat again. “I want it, too. 

“God, this is even more embarrassing than in high school. I’m going to hang up before I get cut off. Save some hostages, and I’ll be up when you get home.”

She heats the food Peter bought in the microwave and eats it while watching a murder documentary. She reads another chapter of her book, eyelids drooping as she tries her best to stay awake. 

She must fall asleep, because she wakes up to Peter pulling a blanket over her body. “Hey,” she croaks.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” he says. 

She blinks the sleep away, sitting up and smoothing a hand over her hair. “It’s okay. I wanted to wait up.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“I didn’t,” she answers.

Peter laughs, quiet and fond, and it makes MJ smile. “Let’s go to bed, Em.”

“Good idea.”

He holds out a hand, and she takes it. 

Peter must have taken a shower, his hair curling the way it does when it’s damp and he hasn’t styled it. Even though it’s different, it reminds her of how it looks when they watch a movie on the sofa and he lays his head in her lap, letting her run her fingers through it.

She grabs her phone from the coffee table, next to her half-empty mug of tea. It lights up in the dark when she accidentally presses the screen.

“You left me a voicemail?” she asks. 

Peter swipes his thumb over the back of her hand, pushing open their bedroom door. 

“I called back.”


End file.
